Season 08 Episode 06

Will is drinking outside a pub and picks a fight he refuses to defend himself in, asking the man hitting him to keep going. He comes round on the ground and is found by the local police officer, Sam MacKenzie, known as Mac, who takes him back to the police station, lets him sleep on a bench, takes the pills off him and telephones the Cambridgeshire force after reading Will's address in his belongings. Will tells Mac he is looking for God. Mac is gentle with two local children, Jacob and Sadie Wilson, who live with their aunt June and uncle Rob; Jacob has been caught shoplifting chocolate again, and Mac pays for it himself rather than tell the boy's uncle, telling him he must apologise properly this time.

Geordie drives out to collect Will, but Will refuses to go home. Geordie loses his temper, tells him that Bonnie and Ernie and the coming baby deserve better, and goes outside for a cigarette. Mac tells him the man needs time and observes that Geordie loves Will as if he were his son. A farmhand, Curtis Cooper, runs up: the Wilsons have not come out to the fields, which they always do. Mac and Geordie find June and Rob Wilson dead on the floor. Geordie notices ink on the uncle's left index finger although he was right-handed, and paperwork showing unpaid bills, and there is a bloody footprint the size of a child's foot. Curtis says he saw the children leave in a hurry, as if running from something.

Back at the station, Jacob pulls a bloody knife on Will and orders him to drive him and his sister away. Mac and Geordie see the car leave and follow, guessing the children are heading for Cromer, where their parents died in a car crash. The car runs out of petrol and Will and the children sit in a wood. Will sees bruises on Jacob's neck. Geordie and Mac arrive and Jacob allows himself to be taken back.

Sadie tells them what she knows. June beat Jacob, including for the chocolates he took because Sadie was hungry, and also abused Rob. That morning the aunt and uncle were fighting, so Jacob took Sadie outside and told her to cover her ears and close her eyes while he went back in to stop it; when he came out the shouting had stopped and he told her to run.

Jacob is protecting his uncle's memory, not himself. Will, refusing to leave until he has finished, finds the answer: the folded paper Jacob had slipped into his Bible while he washed the blood off his face at the station is Rob Wilson's own confession. June had been berating Rob while he was preparing food; he snapped, stabbed her repeatedly, cut his right hand in doing it, and wrote the confession with his left before turning the knife on himself. Both were already dead when Jacob went inside, which is why he came away with the knife and the paper, and he meant to tell Mac and could not find the words. Will tells Jacob the deaths were not his fault, and the advice he gives the boy, that he did everything he could, is the thing he has been unable to accept for himself. Geordie suggests that Mac and his wife adopt the children, and on the drive back to Grantchester Will hands the pills to Geordie and asks him to get rid of them.

In Grantchester, Bonnie and Ernie have returned to find Will missing. Keith is preparing to leave the halfway house because he has reconnected with his son and now feels worth something. Daniel tells Leonard he has been offered gallery space in London and is going for a while, leaving some of his photographs behind. Larry arrives to bring the residents in for questioning about a robbery at Barton, only to find there is nobody to bring in, and Wallace has Leonard put in a cell for no reason and slaps him when Leonard is dismissive, which shocks both Geordie and Larry, and Larry releases Leonard against his orders. Will reaches the vicarage as Bonnie goes into labour, having punched him and then hugged him, and she has convinced herself he does not want her or the baby. The nurse tries to send the family out of the delivery room and Will insists on staying, and Bonnie gives birth to a son, Ernie suggesting the name James and Will adding George for Geordie: James George Davenport. Jack hands out cigars; Leonard looks at Daniel's photographs, sees how Daniel sees the people he photographs, runs to his house and tells him he is everything to him, and Daniel says he had been looking for Leonard because London was not worth going to without him. Leonard engages Keith to work at the halfway house as new residents arrive, with Larry on hand to greet them. Geordie, packing up for a retirement he is now expecting, tells Larry his mother would be proud of him and gives him a needlepoint from his office about doing the right thing, and then learns that Wallace has been reported for excessive force against Leonard and is being transferred, that the top brass have refused his retirement, and that the report was made by Larry. Will baptises his son and preaches at the christening, and Mrs Chapman takes charge of the Keating children now that Cathy has been promoted.

The episode puts the answer in a child's folded paper rather than in a confession extracted by an adult, which is the most careful thing the series does with a story about a violent household. The left-handed note is the clue, and it is found by an officer noticing which hand a dead man used, so the case is decided by two small physical details and no testimony at all. Will's advice to Jacob is the same sentence he has refused to say to himself for two episodes, and handing the pills to Geordie is the first thing he has done for anyone else since the accident.